Bears routed by USC in 20th loss

BERKELEY >> Cal’s inevitable 20th loss of the season, and 14th in a row, arrived without drama on Saturday evening.

The Bears fell behind USC 11-0 just 2 minutes, 13 seconds into the game and gave the announced crowd of 7,345 at Haas Pavilion little reason for hope before losing 89-66.

“After showing improvement in the last five or six games, we took a major step back today,” said Cal coach Wyking Jones, whose team led most of the night on Wednesday against UCLA before losing in overtime.

USC’s Bennie Boatwright provided the game’s only entertainment value, tying a Pac-12 record with 10 3-pointers on the way to scoring 36 points. The senior forward hit nine of his first 10 attempts from beyond the arc.

Jones said he saw worrisome signs of what was to come during a segment of practice on Friday where the Bears were trying to work on their zone defense.

“I told the guys if we play the way we’re playing in this zone segment, we’ll lose by 30 points tomorrow,” Jones said. “That practice is what carried over to today.”

Cal (5-20, 0-13 Pac-12) has not won since beating San Jose State on Dec. 21.

The Bears have dropped 20 straight regular-season conference games, a drought that exceeds a full year. And after being saddled with just two 20-loss campaigns in their first 108 years of basketball, they have done it two years in a row.

Cal has not won as few as five games in a full season since going 2-0 in 1913-14.

The Bears, who travel to Thursday at Arizona, play just two more home games while trying to avoid joining Oregon State in 2007-08 as the only school to finish winless in the conference since the Pac-8 expanded to the Pac-10 in 1978-79.

Justice Sueing scored 17 points for Cal and Matt Bradley added 14.

The Trojans (14-12, 7-6) made 19 of 31 threes and led by as many as many as 31 points.

No one had things going like Boatwright, whose 10 threes tied the Pac-12 record shared by three other players, most recently Washington State’s Robert Franks, who victimized Cal a year ago.

“I was actually really surprised. I haven’t been that wide open in a long time,” Boatwright said.

The Bears were never in this one.

“USC got off to a great start, and we don’t have that margin of error to start off that way,” Sueing said.

USC was up 41-26 at halftime despite shooting 3 for 10 from the free throw line.

The Bears dug themselves a hole from the start as USC made its first four shots, three of them 3-pointers, and Cal opened 0 for 6.